I have to say, this is the first episode that I felt got really silly. Some of the last episode was a bit lame, but with this one we are getting into Lost in Space territory. I hate when shows do an American Western motif for no reason. Here, it leaves far more questions than it should. Who are these humans? Why are they on this planet? Are they stragglers from the Earth colonization effort? When was this place settled? I can accept a few rustic design elements for a "frontier" town, but the wide-brimmed hats and beasts of burden? Come on. Why would this place have such a completely different style of dress and culture? We certainly can't believe they are the ancestors of those who founded the American West. In then end, it's just that the themes of the episode were Western, so someone must have said, "Let's just make it all a Western!"
Curiously, it was also Lost in Space's sixth episode that began the silliness, when a space cowboy appeared in the episode "Welcome, Stranger". To me, overtly western in space just doesn't work. If I ever do a similar blog for Firefly maybe I'll develop this point more fully. That's another show that everyone raves about that I didn't think was so great.
The episode gets sillier with the animals. Horses that roar? Then when they got in the right light, I could see that they were striped like tigers. So I'm supposed to believe someone cross-bred a tiger and a horse? That's the silliest thing since the guy who was half polar bear in early Star Trek II scripts. And I think most of us can figure out that "lupus" was going to mean a wolf. So why couldn't they leave it at that? Why when we finally see the wolf did they have to overdub the audio? The lupus sounds like a bear?
Really, was anyone surprised at the revelation that Red Eye was a Cylon? I hate watching things where I'm just waiting for the protagonist to figure out something obvious. A Cylon on a horse. Sounds like something from Monty Python. Maybe it was that silly image which inspired the whole episode. Then it devolves into a retread of Shane right down to the shootout and lectures about guns and how it feels to kill. Why are these humans still alive? Because they pay "tribute" to the empire? I thought the Cylons wanted to eradicate humanity. Why are they content to extort them, especially when it's clear these people have little money?
The best scene for me was the scene with Boxey playing cards with the guys. It was light and funny to a point, and showed a soft side of Starbuck. I like his "I wasn't letting him smoke!"
We get even more silly names in this episode. Puppis?? Or worse yet, Uncle Bootes. Pronounced "booties". How forboding is that name. You're gonna intimidate a lot of Cylons with that name. They'll shake in their booties.
"The Lost Warrior" was a real letdown for me. I even fell asleep in the middle. I hope that the rest of the series doesn't stay at this level.
Favorite Line: "He's fast. And wait till you see his gun!"
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